


Always the Painter, Never the Muse

by daydreamorbust



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Powers, F/F, Kara Danvers paints in color, Lena Luthor is a sketcher, Lena has been in love with Kara for years, Mutual Pining, and Kara has no idea, but its purely aesthestic, but she has a huge crush on her, everyone is an oblivious disaster, or so she thinks, painter au, they are so gay
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-18
Packaged: 2019-05-06 06:56:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14636439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daydreamorbust/pseuds/daydreamorbust
Summary: Kara Danvers was not an artist. She just likes to sketch and paint and capture every beautiful thing she sees.She just doesn't have enough paper when she sees Lena Luthor every single day.orKara is a painter and Lena is her muse. They just don't know it yet.





	1. Can you sketch/My eyes follow your every move

Kara wouldn’t categorize herself as an artist, she just liked to move her hands, it was nothing of her own doing that those hands could make beautiful things. As she kept trying to tell people, it was never intentional.

A piece of art is never intentional.

Art is unexpected and impractical and messy.

Lena Luthor just so happened to be a work of art. And she just so happened to be Kara’s favorite piece.

Kara was not an artist, but she drew everything she saw. It wasn’t her fault that Lena sat in front of her and to the right, the perfect position for portrait sketches in nearly every single class. 

It also didn’t help, as Kara pointed out to her best friend Winn, that Lena’s almost every feature was perfect and proportional. 

It was just about proportions, she told herself. It had nothing to do with the major crush on Lena she’s had ever since she transferred from Ireland and smiled at Kara one time.

So Kara sketched and kept every single one of them under the guise of improving her technique. She tried to ignore the fact that she kept them in shoe boxes and looked at them when she couldn’t sleep. She tried to ignore the fact that her favorite drawing of Lena was currently residing alone in her folder, the only folder she owns.

She let her eyes drift during class, she already knew most of the material. They’re drawn to Lena every single time. After that, she let her hands take the lead, let her hands stare at Lena’s porcelain figures and perfect raven hair and striking eyes instead of doing it herself.

She found that she didn’t want to accept the fact that she enjoyed Lena’s face almost as much as potstickers. People would gasp. She gasped when she realized.

Being an art student, your final product was everything. It didn’t matter how many drafts or how many pieces of paper, it was always the color choices and the line work. And Kara was clumsy. She has had to stay up countless nights recreating a piece of work she spilled soy sauce on. 

She has also found it hard to find inspiration in something that didn’t have dark hair and an Irish accent. She found it hard to not draw Lena Luthor.

And she was putting together her portfolio. A portfolio that only had an intricate drawing of her favorite subject. Or not favorite subject, only subject.

And her only subject right now was normal, so pristine and polished and perfect. And Kara, well she was in her favorite yellow hoodie that she has washed once at least in the last two weeks. It was good enough.

But she knew, not good enough for Lena Luthor, never good enough for Lena Luthor. No one had ever told her otherwise.

So when Kara was told of their newest art assignment she was already an anxious mess. Then when she was told of the ‘assigned partners’ scenario, it sent her deeper down the rabbit hole. The final kick to the sand was when she went up to the front of the room and read who she would be drawing constantly for the next week: Lena Luthor.

The tension in her shoulders was relieved a little bit when she read the name. Not a total stranger than. Kara did enough internet stalking to know that Lena isn’t a serial killer. Knowing that only helped a little.

“Do you wanna start now then?”

Kara froze and the familiar tension returned full force. She turned around slowly to face the face that she knew better than her own. “Uhhh-- yeah, sure. I’m Kara Danvers, by the way.”

“We have almost every class together, I know your name, Kara,” she shook her head slightly, making her hair fly around at the ends, “I’m Lena,” she said as she stuck out her hand.

Kara took the hand and let her brain overflow with necessary information like the slight calluses on the pads of her fingers and the texture of the carved wooden ring she always wore.

She committed it all to memory before remembering to let go. Kara wiped her palms down on her jeans and finally felt the heat all over her face. 

Lena gestured to the door that leads out to the quad and Kara had no choice but to follow wordlessly after grabbing her sketchbook.

“So how do you want to do this?” Lena asked, Kara only shrugged in response. “We could sit and stare at each other until inspiration strikes,” she waited a few moments then shook her head at Kara again. “I’ll take that lack of response as a yes then.”

Kara was too mesmerized by her hair to pay attention to the conversation at all, she only heard fragments coming from what felt like far away, always so far away.

Lena gestured to the tree that Kara happened to eat lunch under every day, “over here then?”  
Kara could only nod. She wasn’t concerned though, Kara would’ve agreed to anything Lena asked if given the chance.

So she sat and fiddled with the hem of her sleeves and looked into Lena Luthor’s eyes, which was nothing new, no, the new thing was the eyes looking back at her. It was always from the side and usually moving so fast she couldn’t make out any details.

But she could see it all now, the depths of green overlapping each other and the small flecks of gold scattered around the edges. 

Kara didn’t notice how much time had passed until she looked down and there was a pencil in her hand and a near complete drawing of Lena’s eyes.

It’s then that she glances at Lena’s lap and sees a beautiful drawing, perfectly shaded with visible sketch lines around the outside. It took Kara a while to figure out the face. It was her own and it was beautiful. She didn’t understand the contradiction but pushed it aside in favor of looking at Lena’s eyes again.

Only now, her eyes were on Kara’s paper. Only now her eyes were getting blurry with tears and she was grabbing her sketchbook and stuffing it in an expensive looking bag and waving goodbye and walking away before Kara could even comprehend the first action.

She laid back on the grass and looked at the clouds, and she tried to forget the sadness in the eyes she just stared at for hours.

She stared at the sky just as she had with Lena’s eyes, they were certainly both complex enough, and stared until she came up with an answer:

Lena’s eyes were a glass castle waiting to be breached, you couldn’t see past the transparent walls, but a flood was coming, and it would wash out all safety. 

Kara walked home that night with a painting being painted in her mind, and she would make it real soon enough. 

She was sure of it.

So she didn’t sleep that night in favor of gathering all of her Lena sketches and organizing them on the floor.

Kara knew the final project due at the end of the semester had to be great and inspired. She put all the drawings back in the shoe box and shoved it under her bed and thought about Lena until her breathing evened out.


	2. This isn't A-muse-ing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena comes to the conclusion that her crush is going to kill her.
> 
> Kara just wants her attention (for the art).
> 
>  
> 
> A bit mishmash with a bit of plot, lemme know what you think.

Lena walked into class the next day as if nothing happened, as if she didn’t run away with tears in her eyes after seeing a sketch of her that didn’t reflect pain or hurt or evil. That reflected something that wasn’t inherently bad, that didn’t affirm that she was inherently bad.

So she sets her books down and gets out her pencil, all with perfect posture and a blank expression. She’s so focused on keeping her body neutral that when Kara waves a hand a few feet from her face attempting to get her attention, she jumps. Almost imperceptibly, but Kara was always overly observant. 

After that, she makes sure to focus on everything Kara does, purely so she won’t be surprised again. That’s what she reminds herself of when she notices herself staring at her profile for more than two minutes at a time.

Or when she finds her hands itching to sketch the adorable crinkle in Kara’s nose whenever the boy behind her acts like he knows the answer to a question even though he’s been asleep for most of the lesson. 

Or when she actually does sketch the adorable crinkle because she has spent her entire life with too much self-control. 

When the lesson ends, Kara’s eyes find hers and she has to suppress a sigh when she sees the softness around the corners. She really needs to get this crush under control if she’s going to finish this project alive.

Because every second she spends with Kara has her heart clenching with every moment she can’t run her fingers through the hair that’s full of sunshine. And every soft chuckle has a breath being caught in her chest. She simply can’t handle it.

It was so much better to control when Kara would sit behind her and she didn’t have the option to stare at her all day. 

She finds it incredibly hard to deal when Kara scribbles ferociously on a corner of notebook paper, adorable crinkle on full display, and tears it off. She turns to Lena and hands it to her. “Let me know when you’re free to work on the project?”

Lena feels all her bravado being sucked out of her with a quirk of the eyebrow and the slight question mark punctuated at the end. She can only nod.

//

She texts Kara later that night when she can’t sleep. She spends more time than she cares to admit typing and deleting text after text. 

_It’s Lena. Would you like to work on it tomorrow over coffee?_

Too forward. She backtracks.

_Wanna work on it tomorrow?_

_Wanna get together tomorrow and sketch?_

_Wanna draw me while I gawk at your face because you’re too damn pretty?_

She leaves that last one up while she thinks. On the other side of the city, Kara sits on her roof and looks at the dots appearing and disappearing with heavy sighs.

She doesn’t end up texting Kara that night.

//

The sketches and poems and little anecdotes of Kara start accumulating in her notebook until the entire situation is a formula speeding quicker and quicker to infinity (a lot of them were in her calculus notebook). It’s exponential and sure and never going to stop.

Lena has come to the conclusion that her crush on Kara was inevitable. It didn’t matter if they never had classes together, or if they were in different countries. Kara was captivating and gorgeous and literal sunshine and there was no universe in which Lena wasn’t absolutely perplexed and intrigued by her.

So maybe she was lying when she said it was ‘just a crush’ in her journal. And maybe she stares just a little too long to still be in the platonic category. But there’s always that little blush coloring Kara’s cheeks when Lena smiles at her that gives her just a little too much hope.

//

Kara was going crazy trying to perfect Lena’s jawline on her canvas. However many times she erased and redrew, it never looked right. The only sketches she managed to keep were the ones in the margins of her books where she actually got to look at Lena. Her face was irreparable. 

That’s what she reminded herself of when she was vigorously sketching Lena’s every feature during every class. She was doing it for the project. She was doing it for her class and for her future. It was for art.  
So when Lena asked her to join in the studio after class, her heart was racing and her hands were sweating for the sake of art. It just hadn’t hit her yet that Lena was the art she was doing it for.

Lena knew this was a bad idea. The last time they had been alone together, she ran away with tears in her eyes. But it feels so good when Kara trails in after her, adjusting her glasses and squinting through her smile. 

“Ready to get to work then?” She doesn’t know how it came out of her mouth, the last time Lena checked, she was gagging on Kara’s cuteness. She definitely doesn’t write that exact sentence in her journal later that night (she does it with a lot more graphic detail of Kara’s beauty).

“Yeah, let me just grab some materials before we start?”

Kara scampers off through the small studio room, hesitating only at the paints. She drops two brushes on her journey back to the easel already set up. 

“Did you need help with that,” Lena says with a smirk as she leans down and snatches the brush that rolled into her shoe. She hands it back to Kara and swears to the Irish gods that there was an energy transfer when their fingers grazed.

“Thanks,” she says under her breath while the magical blush that Lena keeps thinking about colors her cheeks. 

Lena sits back on her stool and looks down at Kara’s hands that still have graphite shading the side and paint on the corners of fingernails. She stares for admittedly too long before Kara clears her throat.

“Have any ideas?” 

Lena forgets all the ideas she’s been up thinking about in favor of looking at Kara’s sunshine smile. “Umm, the um..” in. Out. In. out. She gets her breathing under control that became erratic without her permission, “I was thinking of, for lack of a better term, a mishmash of sketches from different angles all to create one big picture of something else.”

“Ah, big picture, I like how you think,” she nudges up her glasses, “I was thinking of a dot painting, blurry and colorful and emotional. Something that looks unassuming and normal, but when you look closer and deeper there’s something there that makes you look back,” she takes a breath. “A bit vague for a project painting, I know,” 

Lena gets distracted by the animated undertone in Kara’s voice, she sounded so happy, or maybe anxious, but it was powerful. She sounded excited.

“No, no, it sounds absolutely beautiful.”

Kara wanted nothing more at that moment than to say, _you are._


	3. A Painter's Delight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They stare at each other for hours, and the only other thing than their hands moving were their thoughts going, 'good god I'm gay.'
> 
> Worktime ensues. 
> 
> (next chapter is date night?)

They sat there sketching and painting for hours, eyes never leaving their subject. And Lena was so upset (she wasn’t that upset) that she was subjected to having her crush look at her with soft eyes and delicate hands; she felt too vulnerable. So she did what she could to focus on her work, with precise lines arcing every slight movement. 

But she felt so seen, and it was terrifying.

Kara Danvers saw everything, the slight wobble of Lena’s leg every few moments as if it was battling itself to stay on the floor, to not stutter. The crease in between her eyebrows as she picks up the eraser. The sureness of her fingers.

So Kara Danvers took it all in, every little detail went directly into her long-term storage. And she would call it cliche, but Lena was intoxicating and she didn’t want to stop drinking her in. 

‘Oh, god, look at me, I’ve turned into a gross romantic comedy trope’, Kara thought to herself. (She loved romantic comedies.)

All the while, Lena was trying her very hardest to use every lesson her mother drilled into her brain to remain completely still, to not embarrass herself further than she already has. She was trying to be perfect. 

‘Gosh, look at her, she’s perfect,’ Kara thought as a stray piece of hair from Lena’s pristine bun flew right in front of her face and she was trying to blow it away. It was adorable. Kara took an internal photo and moved her hand faster than she scarfs down a meal. She had to capture it.

Lena tried to place the hair back behind her ear, but it kept falling right in front of her face. She started panicking, she did the only thing she could think of, she took out the pin digging into her scalp and let her hair flow down. She shook it out a little.

‘Oh, gosh, golly, wow, her hair is so beautiful… She’s so beautiful’.

The internal monologue slowed down when Lena’s bottom lip got tugged on and Kara’s stomach did a swoop. Kara’s mind was blank, but her eyebrows were really high up.

Lena’s eyes were drawn to the raised eyebrows of her subject, she didn’t understand the response. She automatically thought it was something she did, so she went over the checklist her mom had posted on the fridge instead of her report card growing up.

_1\. Back straight_  
2\. Feet firmly planted  
3\. Hands surely by your side  
4\. Chest out  
5\. Face Blank  
6\. Lips pursed 

She let go of her bottom lip immediately. Goddam number six, it was always that one. She could never hold of the grin from her face when she was younger, it wasn’t as hard now. Smirking, however, was her new version of rebelling, but when she was too nervous to do that, her bottom lip always got sucked up into the mess.

She repeated the checklist until she was sure of herself again. 

Kara was back to her work.

//

Every glance up sent shivers down her spine, Kara Danvers was a work of art, she was pure and good and everywhere bright where Lena was dark.

She says to herself that the fascination is purely in the places where they are complete opposites, not in the places where she sees all the pain that has become all too familiar in the eyes of her favorite person. Lena was fascinated, sure, but she was so much more than that.

After hours of work, Lena stretches her hands behind her back and above her head and lets her shirt rise and leave her stomach exposed and continues to do so until she doesn’t feel like a stiff plank. 

She looks over and Kara’s cheeks are flushed and she’s vigorously focusing on the paintbrush in her hand.

//

Kara, ever the gentlewoman, offers to go and pick up dinner; she hadn’t eaten in a few hours.

“I’m not sure what else I have to do here,” she watches Kara’s shy smile fall, “, but we could go get food, I know this great diner a few blocks away.”  
Kara nods until her glasses slide down to the tip of her nose.

They silently clean their brushes and bag their pallets. Glancing back at each other, taking turns turning away with a blush creeping up their neck.

They grab their bags and walk out of the building side by side, Kara fumbling to get to the door and open it for Lena. Kara thinks it’s a mission accomplished when Lena blushes, smiles freely and looks at her shoes.

They walk together, not entirely far apart, shoulders occasionally brushing, hands brushing more occasionally with no party wanting to change positions.

At one point Lena gets the idea to stop with the occasional touches and just grab her hand, hold it tight and never let go. She talks herself out of it a moment later.

When they get to the diner, all neon lights and tiny parking lot, Kara surges forward at the door, successfully making Lena blush again. The smell of french fries immediately invading their senses. She hears Kara let out a heavy sigh of contentment.

“How did you find this place?” Kara said with amazement in her voice.

“I used to come here for a milkshake after late nights of studying when I couldn’t sleep,” she doesn’t know where the honesty came from, but it was the truest answer she could think of. Lena doesn’t find herself ever lying to Kara, no matter how insignificant.

“They have milkshakes?!” Lena smile grew wider with every word, Kara looked almost as animated as when she was talking about her art piece. She was adorable.

“The best I’ve ever had.”

“Why are we still standing here then?”

Kara grabbed her hand and dragged her to the counter without thinking. And now, seconds later, she couldn’t stop thinking about the softness under her fingertips. 

Lena, however, was much more detail oriented, meaning she felt every callous along fingertips that she assumed was from the years of drawing and erasing and drawing again. She felt every single thing.

They were both speechless at the counter when the waiter came for their order.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always trying to improve my works so if you have any feedback it would be appreciated. If you have any questions or just want to talk about how gay we are for Katie McGrath, hit me up @awkwardnb on tumblr
> 
> New chapters will be posted within a week of each other if motivation keeps me on track.
> 
> Add a comment or kudos if you please.


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